Conferences
The Liturgy of the Hours:
The Public Prayer of the Church as Foundation
for Christian Spirituality
March 21-22, 2006
An academic conference on the campus of Notre Dame
Theological Rationale
From its inception, the Church has felt an instinct for regular prayer. The General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours notes how “Public and common prayer by the people of God is rightly considered to be among the primary duties of the Church. From the very beginning those who were baptized ‘devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the community, to the breaking of the bread, and to prayer’ (Acts 2:42) [GILH]. In the second century Hippolytus records that all baptized Christians prayed seven times a day, in the morning and evening especially, but throughout the day and at midnight as well. Daily prayer was part of every Christian’s discipline, whether in assembly or in private. It was a way of obeying the Apostles’ command to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17).
This pattern of prayer had its roots in Israel’s cycle of sacrifice in the Temple, whose daily sacrifices (morning and evening) are the distinct analogy to daily prayer (matins and vespers). This pattern continued both in the Synagogue and in the Church, where Jews and Christians found their identity and their spirituality through these acts of worship. Prayer was the source of discipleship that was the foundation for lives of charity.
With the appearance of monasticism in the fourth century, there arose a perpetual problem: that daily prayer be seen as the duty of consecrated persons only. Monastic communities revolved around a liturgy of the hours (ora et labora) and in the middle ages clerics were obliged to recite the daily office. It is frequently felt that liturgy of the hours is incumbent only on those with an exceptional devotion or special calling, and therefore daily prayer is not the concern of the laity.
This is a perception the second Vatican Council has sought to correct. In the 1970 promulgation of the revised book of the Liturgy of the Hours, Pope Paul VI describes the liturgy of the hours “as a kind of necessary complement by which the fullness of divine worship contained in the eucharistic sacrifice would overflow to reach all the hours of daily life.” The ritual reform was the completion of a long process: Pius V promulgated a Roman Breviary in 1568; revisions were made by popes in subsequent centuries until in 1911 Pius X promulgated a new breviary. The whole work of liturgical revision was undertaken again by Pius XII, and in 1960, after consulting with bishops throughout the world, John XXIII issued new regulations for a breviary. The 1970 revised office “has been drawn up and arranged in such a way” that clergy, religious and laity may participate in it, “since it is the prayer of the whole people of God.”
An original understanding is slowly being restored. The common, public prayer of the Church is more than individual, private piety. “The purpose of the liturgy of the hours is to sanctify the day and the whole range of human activity” (GILH, 11). The liturgical daily prayer of the Church is incumbent on each baptized Christian because the divine office is “the very prayer which Christ Himself, together with His body, addresses to the Father” (SC 84). The liturgy of the hours is the liturgy of Christ extended through each one of the hours we live.
The reforms called for by the Second Vatican Council were intended to enable Catholic Christians to grow in faith so that they might be witnesses in the modern world to the Kingdom of God. The Council identified its aims by saying it desired
- to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful;
- to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change;
- to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ;
- to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church;
- and toward that end, it saw particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1).
The liturgy is larger than the Mass. A great deal of profitable attention was focused upon the reform of the Mass, but this was not the only liturgical reform advocated by the Council. "Though only a part of the liturgical reform came under his seal, Pope John XXIII was aware that the fundamental principles on which the liturgy rests required further study. He entrusted this task to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which in the meantime he had convoked. The result was that the Council treated the liturgy as a whole, and the hours in particular …" (Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution promulgating the revised book of the Liturgy of the Hours).
The full liturgy is the totality of prayer that Christ continues through his Church on behalf of mankind.
Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise. For he continues His priestly work through the agency of His Church, which is ceaselessly engaged in praising the Lord and interceding for the salvation of the whole world. She does this, not only by celebrating the eucharist, but also in other ways, especially by praying the divine office. (SC, 83).
The liturgy of the hours extends the eucharistic mystery throughout the temporal cycle of the year and into each hour of the day. It is seen by tradition “as a kind of necessary complement by which the fullness of divine worship contained in the eucharistic sacrifice would overflow to reach all the hours of daily life” (Paul VI's Apostolic Constitution).
This public prayer of the Church is more than private piety. “The purpose of the liturgy of the hours is to sanctify the day and the whole range of human activity” (General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, 11). In this sense, the public liturgical prayer of the Church is incumbent on each baptized Christian. “Public and common prayer by the people of God is rightly considered to be among the primary duties of the Church” (GILH, 1). This is because the divine office is “the very prayer which Christ Himself, together with His body, addresses to the Father” (SC 84). It is liturgical prayer. The liturgy of the hours is the liturgy of Christ extended through each of the hours we live.
The whole life of the faithful, hour by hour during day and night, is a kind of leitourgia [liturgy] or public service, in which the faithful give themselves over to the ministry of love toward God and neighbor, identifying themselves with the action of Christ, who by his life and self-offering sanctified the life of all humanity. (Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution promulgating the revised book of the Liturgy of the Hours.)
Reforms in Eucharistic prayer and practice have received predominant attention from scholars and pastors and laity, but it seems we have yet to embrace the role daily prayer was intended by the Council to play in our lives. There have been sporadic attempts to restore the rhythm of daily prayer to Catholic life, some meeting with more success, others with less. But it seems that every few years, a new generation must rediscover the excellence of Christian prayer.
The excellence of Christian prayer lies in its sharing in the reverent love of the only-begotten Son for the Father and in the prayer that the Son put into words in his earthly life and that still continues without ceasing in the name of the whole human race and for its salvation, throughout the universal Church and all its members (GILH, 7).
This was on the mind of Pope John Paul II when he looked forward into a new millennium. In the jubilee apostolic letter Novo Millenio Inuente, he reminds us that” training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer” (32) and sees the desire for spirituality one of the “signs of the times.” “Perhaps it is more thinkable than we usually presume for the average day of a Christian community to combine the many forms of pastoral life and witness in the world with the celebration of the Eucharist and even the recitation of Lauds and Vespers” (34).
